Tuesday, October 06, 2015

The Pentagon begins whining about a Continuing Resolution (CR)...

via National Defense.

Case in point is the multiyear contract the Air Force signed with Lockheed Martin for C-130J cargo airplanes. “If we go to a year-long CR, we’ll break that multiyear,” said Air Force acquisition executive William LaPlante. “It’s pretty severe.”The Air Force estimates about 50 programs would be thrown into chaos. “What’s worse than sequester? A year-long CR,” LaPlante said.One of the Air Force’s most prized acquisitions, the KC-46 aerial refueling tanker, could be affected, even though the aircraft development is being funded under a fixed-price deal with The Boeing Co. “The tanker is going well even though it has challenges. The biggest threat to the tanker is actually the government’s behavior,” said LaPlante. “So far we’ve been good at keeping our part of the deal. But it has been very difficult in this climate.”An illustration of the inefficiency created by short-term funding is what happened in 2013 when the Air Force had to delay a contract award for a space surveillance system. The plan was to sign a contract for the so-called “space fence” in September 2013, but with no budget in place, the Air Force held off. By the time funding was approved, the pricing in the proposal was no longer valid so the service had to go back to square one. That ended up costing the program a whole year and $120 million in extra costs, LaPlante said. “That was just because of the uncertainty.”Navy acquisition executive Sean Stackley painted a similar picture. “We are still recovering from the 2013 CR and sequester,” he said. The Navy has a growing backlog of airplanes and ships waiting for repairs and upgrades at depots. “New starts were slowed down in 2013, but that’s minor compared to what we’re staring at in 2106,” Stackley said. “By and large the uncertainty of not knowing what your budget will be puts you in shackles in terms of executing in the course of the year.”

Sorry boys. I no longer care. Whine all you want but you've bet the house on stupid ideas, you're making plans to further neuter the Ground Combat Element and you've cut the number of battalions to the point of idiocy.